It
is customary to call the civilization of modern Europe par excellence Christian and to think of it as the special trustee
of Christian truth among the less enlightened peoples of the east. Yet in the twentieth century when the time of
spiritual harvesting had come we find ‘Abdu’l-Baha saying that the West as well
as the East had imagined themselves as
having attained a glorious pinnacle of achievement and prosperity, when in
reality they have touched the innermost depths of heedlessness and deprived
themselves wholly of God’s bounteous gifts.
Nor can they have imagined the awfulness of the crisis which western
civilization would be called upon to face, nor the challenge and the strain to
which it would be subjected.
(George Townshend, Christ and Baha’u’llah: 50)
Imagining
the bottom to be the top, the nadir the acme, that heedlessness is knowledge, is
to invert the proper order, to switch the poles and reverse cause and
effect. That leads to traumatic errors
in thinking. Materialist philosophies
distort true human nature, and dismiss most of spirituality as a product of diseased
and soft minds. For me, religion as the
revealed Word of God is foundational of all else. True religion enlarges our vision. It stretches the idea of knowledge to include
the relations of the soul with the transcendent powers that govern and drive
the universe.
I agree with Walt Whitman’s line about his own
poetry: “One deep purpose underlay the others—and that has been the religious
purpose.”
In a materialist
order of knowledge, all causes must be empirical, must be one or more of the
processes and interactions taking place within the visible, measureable,
explainable, world. Such knowing misses
spiritual causality, which is a different kind of process, another kind of
event, a qualitative not quantifiable sort of interaction. Dogmatic materialists miss spiritual causes
because they have negatively prejudged their possibility. More moderate materialists simply don’t know
how or where to look for them, for the influence of spirit can be traced
through social channels that are called, for example, cultural diffusion. Mostly, spiritual causality goes undetected
because every invisible spiritual cause must also be manifest as an organic,
visible cause and it is these organic beginnings that the materialist mind
latches on to. This should be no
surprise. Recall that materialism is,
intellectually, the condition of separation from and disbelief in God. Naturally, one in this condition is not going
to look to God as a cause for anything except as some illusion cooked up by
religious leaders trying either to keep their congregations under their thumb
or massage their failures till they feel better. For materialists a “supreme being” as simply
a projection of what we like best about ourselves.
The Master’s statement,
quoted in the last post, that the “reformation
and renewal of the fundamental reality of religion constitute the true and
outworking spirit of modernism” is spiritual causality. It may be best
understood, perhaps, as a transcendent impregnating event, the sowing of new
energies in the world by the Word of God, endowing the soul with new
potentialities, powering the human urge for progress, firing the imagination
with new visions, the mind with new discoveries, the heart with new loves, and
laying down the plan of God for social development at every level of human
life. It is all those things that we
place under umbrella phrases like “the spirit of the age.” Today, this energy is given a name and mental
form in the consummate principles of the oneness of humankind and the oneness
of religion.
This oneness is not essential
oneness, which is spiritual causality and is from the beginning of all things,
the generator of all processes and events.
Rather, the oneness referred to here is fully developed oneness, the perfect
and complete manifest form; the realization in a diverse organic structure of spiritual potential, like the mature human body is of the embryo--the embryo, in turn, being the first form of a prior spiritual impulse. Bahá’u’lláh,
for example, stated: “The highest essence and most perfect expression of
whatsoever the peoples of old have either said or written hath, through this
most potent Revelation, been sent down from the heaven of the Will of the
All-Possessing, the Ever-Abiding God. Of old it hath been revealed: "Love
of one's country is an element of the Faith of God." The Tongue of
Grandeur hath, however, in the day of His manifestation proclaimed: "It is
not his to boast who loveth his country, but it is his who loveth the
world." Through the power released by these exalted words He hath lent a
fresh impulse, and set a new direction, to the birds of men's hearts, and hath obliterated
every trace of restriction and limitation from God's holy Book.” (Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh:95)
This released spiritual power is blowing apart
the materialist world at an ever-accelerating rate, because the old, inelastic
mental wineskin of materialism is too small to hold this new, fermenting expanding
wine of Revelation, this great outpouring of Spirit. Yet, few look at the inadequacy of the
container, but, instead, try to patch it again and again.
Spiritual
modernity, which is the reform and renewal of the reality of religion, is the
template for intellectual and social modernity, and human beings must be
educated to think and act in new ways: for humanity
can not save itself. It requires higher help. These spiritual Educators, as
‘Abdu’l-Bahá calls Them “impart spiritual
education, so that intelligence and comprehension may penetrate the
metaphysical world, and may receive benefit from the sanctifying breeze of the
Holy Spirit, and may enter into relationship with the Supreme Concourse. He
must so educate the human reality that it may become the center of the divine
appearance, to such a degree that the attributes and the names of God shall be
resplendent in the mirror of the reality of man, and the holy verse "We
will make man in Our image and likeness" shall be realized.
"It is clear that human power is not able to fill
such a great office, and that reason alone could not undertake the
responsibility of so great a mission. How can one solitary person without help
and without support lay the foundations of such a noble construction? He must
depend on the help of the spiritual and divine power to be able to undertake
this mission. One Holy Soul gives life to the world of humanity, changes the aspect
of the terrestrial globe, causes intelligence to progress, vivifies souls, lays
the basis of a new life, establishes new foundations, organizes the world,
brings nations and religions under the shadow of one standard, delivers man
from the world of imperfections and vices, and inspires him with the desire and
need of natural and acquired perfections. Certainly nothing short of a divine
power could accomplish so great a work. We ought to consider this with justice,
for this is the office of justice.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions:8-10)
Next post will present a theory of the three levels—spirit,
mind, society— where the revolt against materialism is taking place.
No comments:
Post a Comment